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Technology is changing war but legal concepts and international law are not as mutable. As governments and leaders enthusiastically move forward with technological efficacy, the legal morass and moral quandary caused by social, psychological and economic destruction promises to create new problems that may haunt us for generations. But technology moves fast, corporate America knows how to package and sell it, and the American public is the last to weigh in. Democracy is increasingly purchased in the ongoing divided American electorate and the internecine warfare election politics now represent. Like the proverbial Pyrrhic victory, we crush and pick off our enemies as the facts of our deeds slowly leek out and we potentially stand in ubiquitous and unforgiving popular judgement at home and abroad.

We seem to be getting farther and farther away from “though shall not kill” and “violence begets violence”

At last we have a technological equivalent to hackers threatening social and economic information exchange where the government is “anonymous” and civilization itself is the victim. It is legion, expect it…

“WHEN it comes to lethal drone strikes against foreign targets, America’s government and Congress should be aware that “what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”, says …”

To kill or not to kill? Seems to be the question for a post cold war America that struggles to find a useful venue and vehicle for its newly found monolithic world power status and the ways in which that lonely status make it an irresistible target for any group looking to be taken seriously and seeking a megaphone for its cause.

No one is raising the important issue of how simple and relatively inexpensive it might be to deploy this drone technology against the US and its allies. It seems logical that drone technology would be simpler and cheaper to create and deploy than a nuclear weapon, or a so called “dirty bomb.” So, what is really at stake here might be who is angry at the US and why? How can the US justify unilaterally searching out its defined enemies and taking them out gangster style no matter national sovereignty or international law.

The London Economist tackles this issue in a straightforward way yet with a focus and a lens that seems a bit ideologically myopic and perhaps a bit nostalgic for the cowboy days of George W.

You be the judge:

“T WAS so much simpler when George W. Bush was president. Outlining America’s plans for Osama bin Laden a few days after the September 11th attacks in 2001, Mr Bush declared: “there’s an old poster out West, I recall, that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.” For all those at home and abroad made uncomfortable by sweeping assertions of American power it was a moment of predictable provocation. Without surprise, they heard a swaggering Republican president vowing to make his country’s attackers pay, and seeming to pay no more heed to legal niceties than a cowboy bent on a lynching.

Yet 12 and a half years later, the cautious, lawyerly Barack Obama—a Democratic president with nothing of the…”

There may be no more important breakthrough in warfare than the stealth, quiet and precise murder and mayhem America can deliver through its drone program.

Of course, as the drone system becomes more popular in use and infamous in its impact, regarding those whom are targeted and whose social peace is disrupted when neighbors are crushed by a drone visit, it is now getting and will continue to get increasing popular attention.

At last, the American media and the popular imagination are being challenged as the role of these gadgets becomes more and more visible in American efforts to get and crush the bad guys. The New Yorker magazine, takes a go at the issue in its most recent issue:

“When I read the news that John Brennan was set to appear before the Senate in hopes of becoming of the C.I.A. director, I thought of the group of villagers I met at a seaside hotel in Yemen two years ago. They had driven many miles to see me, coming from the Yemen countryside in a pair of battered taxis, and they were waiting in the hotel parking lot. There were about a dozen of them in all. It was a …”

Some of the descendants of today’s native Americans are also the descendants of today’s Mexican Americans. For thousands of years there has been a natural migration from well below the Rio Grande to cold northern parts of what is today’s “Upper Midwest.” The region today that is loosely made up of the Dakotas, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois. Ironically, even the then pilgrims were considered “illegal aliens” by the then natives. The same natives who “hosted them” and welcomed the pilgrims in what we now call “Thanks Giving.” Certainly the then natives must have thought of the pilgrims as “illegal aliens” but gave them quarter and kindness nevertheless.

But “my oh my” how times have changed and how the Thanksgiving tables have been turned. The immigration debate promises to change how we all define America and maybe even begin to tie together a North American Continent that continues to play a role for new comers. We may yet get the facts straight and muster up some of that native hospitality that made that long cold winter of immigration survivable for the original pilgrims.

We may yet repair the growing divisions in our country and continue to be a beacon of giving, welcoming and building for future generations. Like the Statue of Liberty, a symbol with open arms, allowing our culture to continue to welcome and thank all of us who were here before the next comers, like the native Americans who taught us that Thanks Giving lesson.

Get the facts at Pew. The Pew Hispanic Center continues to provide resources and leadership in this important area:

“The nation’s total immigrant population reached a record 40.4 million in 2011, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center. Over the last decade, the number of immigrants in the U.S. has grown by more than 9 million. The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. grew in the early part of the decade before peaking at 12 million in 2007. It is now at 11.1 million as of 2011, the last year for which an estimate is available.”

A month after the last American troops left Iraq, the State Department is operating a small fleet of surveillance drones here to help protect the United States Embassy and consulates, as well as American personnel. Some senior Iraqi officials expressed outrage at the …

A nearly two-month lull in American drone strikes in Pakistan has helped embolden Al Qaeda and several Pakistani militant factions to regroup, increase attacks against Pakistani security forces and threaten …

“Rabbani opened his arms to embrace him and suddenly I heard a boom.” That is the recollection of a witness to the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former president of Afghanistan and more recently head of the country’s High Peace Council, who was murdered inside his …

The stealth C.I.A. drone that crashed deep inside Iranian territory last week was part of a stepped-up surveillance program that has frequently sent the United States’ most hard-to-detect drone into the country to map suspected nuclear …

Iran said on Sunday that it shot down a U.S. stealth drone near the country’s eastern border, but U.S. officials in Afghanistan said the craft could instead be an unmanned reconnaissance plane that veered off course and …

The brewing conflict over the fate of two high-ranking Libyan figures — Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, once Libya’s heir apparent, and Abdullah Senussi, the former intelligence chief — is not only a test for the …

In seemingly endless times of “trash talk” that led to an improbable and unpopular political victory, the newly minted president clamors: “Now arrives the hour of action.” Fleeting relief comes to the nation as the transition […]

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